Jensen Huang says export controls only spur China’s AI chip development

Nvidia’s market value briefly crossed $4 trillion last week, underscoring the dominance of its GPUs in artificial-intelligence workloads—from chatbots to autonomous vehicles. Yet Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang argues that Washington’s effort to slow China’s access to those processors has largely missed its mark. “Depriving someone of technology is not a goal, it’s a tactic—and that tactic was not in service of the goal,” he told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. Huang maintains that sustained U.S. leadership depends on spreading an “American tech stack” worldwide rather than tightening export throttles.

The CEO stresses China’s centrality to global AI development, noting that roughly half of the world’s AI engineers are Chinese. For American technology to remain the industry standard, he contends, those developers must be able to build on U.S. hardware and software. Otherwise, Beijing’s engineers will simply accelerate domestic alternatives, narrowing the innovation gap and eroding U.S. influence.

Security hawks worry that the same chips could power the People’s Liberation Army, but Huang dismisses the threat. He argues that rival militaries avoid relying on each other’s supply chains and that China already operates a fleet of home-grown supercomputers. “They don’t need Nvidia’s chips…to build their military,” he said.

The remarks follow a bipartisan letter from U.S. senators urging Huang to steer clear of firms linked to China’s defense sector. Over the past three administrations, Washington has tightened export rules on cutting-edge GPUs, prompting a black market for higher-bandwidth models. While grey-market parts lack firmware updates and enterprise software support, they still find their way into Chinese data centers, highlighting enforcement limits.

Huang, echoing comments by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, warns that broad embargoes often backfire. He likens them to recent Chinese curbs on rare-earth minerals, which spurred an American push for self-reliance. “If it happens to us, it must happen to them,” he said, framing the U.S.–China AI race as an inevitable but mutually beneficial competition—one best won through faster innovation rather than higher walls.